Saturday, 7 July 2012

Words, words, words by Bill Kirton

After being so pleasantly surprised by the number and
nature of comments provoked by my first Authors Electric blog, the pressure is
on. And yes, that’s a deliberate example of a hanging participle because it
gives me the opportunity to show that I know what a hanging participle is.

Anyway, as I was saying ... the pressure. It seems
that by speculating on the ‘literary’ aspects of our trade I was offering some
sort of relief from the traditional (and, let’s face it, crucially important),
topic of marketing, increasing sales, raising profiles and the rest. I can
assure you that, had I been any good at selling, I’d have written about that,
but I’m not. So, at least to begin with, I’ll try to fill the role of a
specific archetype in this village-like online community.

Villages have vicars, pub landlords, squires and
postmistresses, but there’s only one role that includes the word ‘village’ in
its title – idiot. However, despite Danny Boyle’s plans for the Olympic opening
ceremony, the archetypal rural idyll he references is no longer representative
of who and how we are; it’s given way to a middle class urban vision of 4
x 4s and drizzled Balsamic vinegar. Political correctness has also insisted
that you can only say ‘idiot’ if it’s followed by ‘savant’. So there’s a need
for different archetypes. Which is why (Yes, I know you shouldn’t begin a new
sentence with a relative pronoun), I’m proposing myself not necessarily
as its idiot (although some of you may disagree) but as its ‘village
pretentious git’.

So much for my function. Now to the substance of this
blog. (And yes, I also know that neither of those is a true sentence, but I’m a
writer – in fact, in the words of my granddaughter, ‘a grate riter’ – so I can
do what I like with words.)

Words define us, our own but also other people’s. When
asked to put modesty aside and describe ourselves, we may opt for ‘generous’, ‘sensitive’,
‘kind’, ‘understanding’, ‘intelligent’ and many other words which will cause
people to want to have our babies. But if someone else decides we’re ‘thick’, ‘obnoxious’,
‘selfish’, ‘vulgar’ or ascribes other, similar qualities to us, the door to
obstetrics will remain closed. Be warned, we’re dealing with existentialism
here, where ‘Hell is other people’.

You may think it unlikely that there could be such a
disparity between opinions but try this: in a corridor, you see a young,
sharply-dressed man taking great care combing his hair, teasing it into peaks
or whatever people with hair do to it. What’s your snap judgement on him?
Probably along the lines of ‘vain’, ‘fancies himself’, ‘wanker’. Then you see
the notice on the door outside which he’s standing: ‘Interviews 2.30’. Is he
still a wanker? Or is he perhaps desperate to get the job because he has a
young family to support? The thing is that actions, such as hair combing, don’t
‘mean’ anything in themselves, but we base our judgements on them and those
judgements, once articulated, become ‘truths’.

With that in mind, consider our divine powers as
writers. We live, like everyone else, in a precarious reality where meanings
can be ascribed on a whim or a misinterpretation of actions. Uncertainty and
frustrations are the norms. But in our books, we manipulate the words and the
actions to direct readers towards particular, preferred judgements. I know it’s
still possible for them to decide that our shining hero is and always will be a
wanker, but it’s harder and it’s probably motivated by things in their own
psyches over which we can’t have any control. But we do more than that. Most
books resolve issues, tie up loose ends, have satisfactory denouements – all of
which suggests that, unlike the ‘real’ ‘reality’, the reality of the book does
have substance, structure, even meaning. In other words, it’s a much better, or
at least more comfortable reality.

So we live in these two worlds. There’s the uncertain,
unpredictable, chaotic everyday one where we have no idea why X said so-and-so,
Y did this or that or our carefully nurtured retirement annuity becomes
available the day after we’ve been run over by a bus. And then there’s the
world of our books, where we know exactly who the people are, what they’ll do,
why they’ll do it, how they’ll react and, overall, feel a sense of completeness
and certainty about the finished article. Life is accidental; books are
deliberate.

And it’s all thanks to words. The musician Vangelis
said that ‘music should continue emotions where words finish’ and I think that
confirms rather than contradicts what I’m about to say because, without wishing
to imply that literature has any superiority over the other arts, the
definiteness of words does make its images and effects more precise. Musicians,
painters, dancers and most other non-verbal artists can move us, create moods,
transport us into other ways of feeling and thinking, but I’m not sure that,
without access to the word, they could convey exactly what a writer achieves
simply by calling someone a coward. They can depict cowardice, flight, fear,
and an amalgam of them all, but the blatant ‘Freddie was a coward’ is explicit,
non-negotiable.

So, it’s another argument for choosing our words with
care and, as a postscript, it’s one I offer to all those who preface FaceBook
and Twitter comments with ‘Check this out …’, ‘Check out my …’, ‘Another five
star review …’, ‘Hey guys …’, ‘My new novel is now …’

10 comments:

Well hang my particple, that's an interesting and well worded post for first thing on a saturday morning. And I cheer as the existentialist savant amongst us (I have created you thus) tells me that he believes books have meaning (I suppose really it's narrative which gives the meaning to words in this respect?) In the dim distant reaches of the past when I was teaching English A level I used to stun the class by suggesting that the difference between 'real' people and 'characters' was that characters HAD to have a purpose whereas 'real' people didn't. And subsequently a lot of my creative work has involved playing around with the concept of 'real' characters - what that might mean - what it means when a character doesn't know they are a character or refuses to accept the constraint. Chasing Waves (that Godotesque play with a passing wave at the Higgs Boson story) does just this. The characters refuse to acknowledge that they are not real. This is absurdist drama and a jolly good read even if you can't see it 'live.' It means that I also get a bit hot under the collar when people are described as 'characters' or worse still 'real characters' What does such a thing mean? Listen closely, you'll hear it said all the time on that square box thing in the corner - sorry that rectangular screen blotting out the wall - and mostly about politicians. How can a politician be a character (real or otherwise) Are we to believe they have a 'purpose?' after all! Happy Saturday folks and thanks for the quick brain workout Bill!

P.S. I've been bellyaching on about Chasing Waves since they 'probably' found Higgs Boson on Wednesday and not sold a copy even at the ridiculous slashed price of 99p. Which leads me to conclude either a)no one is that interested in Higgs Boson b) no one dares download a play on an ereader c) no one likes me or my work or d) my cloak of invisibility is working well as usual. You can find out ALL about it on my witty and erudite blog http://callyphillps.wordpress.com It's funny folks. Honestly. (I was told earlier this week by 2 sources that I should be a comic writer - but there you have a comic piece and I can't get it arrested!) Sigh. Back to drawing board.

Just read my Kindle stats. That's my cloak of invisibilty you're wearing, Cally. Bill, I like what you say about character. I often think that if characters in stories knew they were characters in stories they'd behave a damned sight differently

Thanks Cally, Dennis and Kathleen - I think they must be selling those invisibility cloaks at Lidl's because there are plenty of them around.

I now have Chasing Waves, Cally, and, for others who'd like it, it's at http://amzn.to/MQnaEc (UK) and http://amzn.to/NcMDXg (USA).

And, in defence of my use of the word 'meaning', I wasn't wanting to suggest that such 'meaning' has any significance. We all want stuff to 'mean' things, otherwise the reality of absurdity can be oppressive (to some). So the completeness of books gives that comforting illusion that there can be reasons for things - despite all the evidence to the contrary.

Your last comment is so ably demonstrated in your wonderful Alternative Dimensions which I'm in the middle of reviewing right now Bill... the meaning of meaning and the reality of reality that's all there is and all you need to know? Is it? To be or not to be? Whatever - folks BUY BILLS BOOK actually you need to look up Alternative Dimensions by Jack LeFebre on amazon. If you ever wondered about virtual worlds (Second Life etc) you will LOVE this book.

Existentialism, of course, produced some of the few works of literature (Kundera, slightly later than Camus, does it brilliantly too)that draw explicit attention to this difference between the work of art and real life - that in the latter case context has undefinable limits whilst in the former context is always closed on one level and the limitlessness comes not from a seamlessly blurred reality but from the limitless possibilities in the reader - and of course by throwing context back in this way onto the reader, existentialism forces us to examine what it is that makes context limitless in reality and ofers the possibility that here, too, maybe the endlessly connecting dendrites trailing out of every sense-field come less from "reality" than from our perception of it - in other words, forcing us to examine what we are as readers of novels forces us to examine what we are as readers of life and makes us realise that maybe the two processes are the same.

and on your end point - you're saying that literature's key lies in that it tells rather than shows? Deliciously devilish of you, Sir.

I think I sort of agree and disagree - the precision of words feels as though it gives a concreteness to a statement whereas other forms of art (and words used differently) produce an emotional conviction (the precision won't convince you that what is precisely described is true - which raises questions which matters more of course). I don't think this is actually true - it is more obviously true because the representational symbolism of words is something we're all familiar with. There is just as accurate a representational symbolism in art (from the semiology of the iconographer through paintings of the vanities) and music (think of the complex codes in ballet or the use of instruments in Peter and the Woolf)

Thanks Dan, for running with it. I’d love to take credit for advocating a (subversive) tell not show approach but the village idiot part of my function prevented me spotting that. I like the readers of novels/readers of life parallel and I agree that both work in the same way. The only difference is that our fictions imply purpose and resolution while life isn’t so accommodating.

I accept your second point, too, about the precision of words. I still think their specificity anchors our perceptions more soundly than do musical textures, ballet codes or visual semiotics. I’m certainly not suggesting they have greater emotional or aesthetic impact; it’s just that, when it comes to pinpointing and anchoring something into the nearest to a ‘truth’ we can get, the tyranny of the label is supreme.

And that reminded me of that great Ionesco play, The Lesson, in which the professor’s maid warns him that ‘Arithmetic leads to philology and philology leads to crime’. Here’s a quick, loose translation of bit of the professor’s lesson I was thinking of:

'If you let out several sounds very quickly, they’ll automatically hang on to one another, to make syllables, words, even sentences at a pinch – groupings of greater or lesser importance, purely irrational sound assemblies, stripped of all sense but, precisely for that reason, able to rise high and float up into the air. It’s only words that are weighed down by what they signify, made heavier by their meaning which end up falling, succumbing, crumbling down into the ears of deaf people.'

I love Ionesco - in fact I wrote a flash fiction about Rhinoceros for this year's Bridport. i think you're right that language has a greater specificity *for us* but I not necessarily for other cultures - the medieval churches in both the east and west for example. Of course now we're bordering on those ancient chestnuts that preoccupied the sixteenth century so much (and back to Nominalism) to do with the lexicon versus the imagination.